“Religions are united not by belief in God but by belief in life after death.”
Stephen Batchelor
One of Gautama Siddhartha’s great contributions to the spiritual quest is how he challenged the idea of some part to a person that continues past that person’s death. He denied there was some essence, a “soul” occupying our bodies like a passenger on a bus eventually departing for a new ride. At the same time, as Stephen Batchelor points out, Gautama Siddhartha wasn’t able to completely shake the concept. He denied the existence of a “soul” but also spoke of his past lives. While denying any continuing essence to a person, he did posit a way in which the intentions and actions of a person led to specific rebirths for many, many lifetimes.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Wise counsel. And, who knows? There really is more to heaven and earth than can be encompassed by our ideas of what should be. At the same time I have to admit I find the lack of any obvious mechanism to facilitate one life leading to another a daunting obstacle. And while the Buddha counseled us to listen to the elders, he also advised in the last analysis we not put someone else’s head atop our own.
Frankly, I find I take the twelve-fold chain as a startlingly useful metaphor for how consciousness arises and how it feeds itself and how it causes constant new births – without feeling a need to believe the rather unlikely possibility that this all results in the birth of a new body.
Here I gather I’m in a minority position. The idea of post-mortem existence, is, it seems, a near universal desire. Today most all religions promise one form of life after death or another. And I’m fascinated to notice, whether religious or not in a conventional sense, and whether they believe in God or not; how many people are nonetheless quite happy to believe they personally will live forever. Personally I enjoy irony, so this seems almost charming. Except for the ferocity with which people will defend this belief in their personal immortality.
So, in addition to what one finds in religions, all sorts of different people have reflected on the possibilities of a post-mortem existence. For the most part the writers in this area are believers of one stripe or another. Two areas in particular have been the subject of close examination, the phenomenon of near death experiences and the possibilities of reincarnation.
Susan Blackmore has critically investigated the near-death phenomenon. And I highly recommend her study Dying to Live. Here’s a sympathetic review and here’s a critical review.
Of course near death experiences are not the only ways people hope to establish the validity of continuing existence. There are also those numerous accounts of reincarnation. An essay I’ve found particularly useful is Leonard Angel’s examination of Ian Stevenson’s famous Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, “Empirical Evidence for Reincarnation?.” Here’s Stevenson’s response together with Angel’s rejoinder.
Ultimately I believe soul is a useful metaphor for inner processes. But, as I’ve said, I find myself unconvinced by arguments for the body being a host and not the thing in itself. Still, Stephen Batchelor, the great Buddhist critic and perhaps the leading thinker in this area, suggests a passionate engaged agnosticism regarding such matters.
Stephen calls the serious student of the way to not know.
And I stop. I pause. He is right.
I believe the way of not knowing is the way of wisdom.
As I said I believe that the language of soul and rebirth can be very useful as metaphor. So, I’m not calling on anyone to eschew that usage.
But, while accepting, always, the possibility of being wrong, there seems so little evidence to support such claims I feel there’s no need to bet on some part of my being reincarnating to heaven, hell or another body.
Rather. What is important is right here, and the many births right here.
Wisdom
is letting go of all certainties…
That’s the real deal.
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